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Robert J. Kelleher, Judge and Tennis Official, Dies at 99

Robert J. Kelleher, a federal judge and former tennis champion who helped transform tennis in the United States by spearheading an effort to admit professionals into major tournaments, died Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 99.

His death was announced by Chief Judge Audrey B. Collins of the Federal District Court in Los Angeles.

Judge Kelleher was practicing law in Los Angeles when he took the helm of the staid United States Lawn Tennis Association in 1967. At the time, the sport had a country-club aura and was resistant to change. Players in professional circuits were barred from major tournaments, a policy that cost professionals like Jack Kramer and Rod Laver dearly in the record books, if not at the bank. Judge Kelleher insisted that tennis could best market itself and its star players by abandoning its pretense of being an amateur sport.

“They told me I was letting the money-changers into the temple, but I thought it was inevitable that tennis would have to go professional, and to tell the truth I’d do it all over again if I had to,” he said in a 1998 interview with The New York Times.

His legacy is enduring: the prize money at a grand slam tournament can now exceed $20 million.

It was Judge Kelleher who led an effort that turned the United States Championships at Forest Hills, Queens, into the United States Open, attracting the world’s best players. In the late 1960s, the tournament was contested by a shrinking pool of amateurs; players were often defecting to the professional circuit after winning a grand slam event or two.

Judge Kelleher, who did legal work for stars like Billie Jean King, Arthur Ashe and Pancho Gonzalez, used his prominence in tennis circles to campaign for an “open” policy. That policy followed the lead of Wimbledon, which inaugurated the so-called Open era in 1968 after defying the International Lawn Tennis Federation and choosing to allow amateurs and professionals to compete in the tournament in 1967.

Judge Kelleher argued his case in 1967, telling the executive committee of the United States Lawn Tennis Association that “the status quo must be changed.”

“We don’t think the world-class amateur can live honestly and effectively,” he said.

His position was unpopular with East Coast traditionalists, whom he further alienated by referring to them as “old goats who made crooks out of little kids by making them take money under the table instead of paying prize money.”

Photo

Robert Kelleher serving for point in a senior doubles match in 1962. Kelleher was practicing law when he took the helm of the United States Lawn Tennis Association in 1967.Credit
Los Angeles Times, via Associated Press

But he prevailed. In February 1968, the United States association voted to open competition to professionals, and weeks later the International Lawn Tennis Federation followed suit. Professionals were made eligible to play in grand slam tournaments. Judge Kelleher was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2000.

A prominent litigator, he was nominated to a federal judgeship by President Richard M. Nixon in 1970.

Judge Kelleher was the trial judge in the celebrated “Falcon and Snowman” case of Christopher Boyce and Andrew Daulton Lee, who were convicted of supplying classified information to the Soviet Union. The case was the subject of a book by Robert Lindsey and a 1985 film starring Sean Penn and Timothy Hutton.

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When Mr. Lee was paroled, he paid the judge a friendly visit and was, Judge Kelleher said, “what you would have to call rehabilitated.”

Robert Joseph Kelleher was born in New York City on March 5, 1913. In his youth, he was a ball boy at the tennis tournament in Forest Hills. He was a graduate of Williams College and Harvard Law School.

At Williams, he was the captain of the tennis team and won an Eastern Collegiate doubles title. He later held the national senior doubles title with his playing partner, Elbert Lewis, from 1958-62.

In 1968, after he became head of the tennis association, he played on Centre Court at Wimbledon, teaming with R. Sargent Shriver, then the United States ambassador to France, to win a match in the veterans doubles division.

Judge Kelleher was captain of the United States Davis Cup team in 1962 and in 1963, a championship season for the United States. That squad included Ashe, an unheralded rookie who went on to win the first United States Open of the Open era in 1968.

Judge Kelleher had lived in Southern California since he married Gracyn Wheeler, a former top-10 tennis star, in 1940. She died in 1980 at 60. He is survived by a son, R. Jeffrey; a daughter, Karen Kathleen Kelleher; and three grandchildren.

When he was not practicing law, Judge Kelleher sharpened his tennis game on his backyard hard court and on the only clay court in Beverly Hills, which happened to be owned by his fleet-of-foot friend and next-door neighbor, Ginger Rogers.

A version of this article appears in print on June 24, 2012, on Page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: Robert J. Kelleher, 99, Judge and Tennis Official, Dies. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe